This is not my carwash anymore! - CorkinGoodStories.com

?Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.?

Jesus in Matthew 5:23, 24

?Let me tell you something that happened to you a few years back.? You had a carwash you just loved.? (Or maybe it was a grocery store or a hairstylist or mechanic or church or friend or coffee shop or a hundred other things or people.)? At this carwash of yours they treated you well.? They washed your car well.? They had fair prices.? They were fast and it didn?t take much of your day to get the car clean.? They gave you a fresh cup of coffee or a cold bottle of water.? The waiting room was clean and new and nice and they had Sports Center on the TV.? You just loved your carwash.? Then one day, maybe 2 to 5 years after you fell in love with your carwash, something happened.? Maybe they nicked the paint on your car or maybe they raised the prices a lot or maybe they got so popular it took forever to get your car cleaned or any one of 8 dozen other things.? You said to yourself and maybe to the manager, ?I don?t like this place anymore.? I?m going somewhere else. This is not my carwash anymore.

?I don?t personally have a problem with this scenario because after all we live in a capitalistic society which is driven by competition.?? So, go ahead and find a carwash that you like better.

?This carwash scenario is a consumer mentality and process with the following stages:? The Honeymoon Stage in which I love my carwash.? The Disillusionment Stage in which I don?t like my carwash anymore.? The Separation Stage in which I leave and find a new carwash to love.?

?The problem arises when we take the ?you raised your prices and you are not my carwash? mentality to our church or to our marriage or to our relationships. That is when we will certainly dishonor God and certainly harm others.

?To review briefly, the consumer approach is this:?

• I am enamored with you.?
• I am disillusioned with you.?
• I leave you.?

?

Pastor Steve Meeks of Calvary Community Church suggests a different set of relational choices for us as believers.? He traces out a four stage process of relationships and church life and it starts with the same two stages of the consumer approach.?

?This approach could be called the compassion/commitment approach to relationships:

• I am enamored with you.?
• I am disillusioned with you.?
• I stick with you and work out our differences.
• We enter into a deeper, more committed, more vibrant, more useful relationship.

?

?Pastor Meeks points out some very helpful truths about this four stage process of committed, compassionate Christian relationships.

?First, the Honeymoon Stage cannot last forever and the euphoria of this stage is bound to end.? Some marriages have lasted 58 years but no honeymoon ever lasted 58 years.? Given that we live in a fallen world and that we all possess sin natures it is simply impossible to live forever in the honeymoon stage.

?Second, the Disillusioned Stage arrives when the euphoria and bliss is gone due to some event or discovery.? This is really good because to be ?disillusioned? is to be set free from your ?illusions.?? To be disillusioned, which we normally take as a bad thing, is actually a good thing because we are brought into contact with reality and the illusions (falsehoods) that we believed have been dashed.?

?Third, we enter the Transformation Stage in which we engage with the person or the people with whom we have gotten alienated and we work it out.? Rather than running to a new marriage or a new church or a new friendship we hang in there together.? We talk through things.? We apologize.? We forgive.? We reset.? We affirm our commitment to each other.? We refuse to run.? This is the ?leave your gift at the altar and go and be reconciled to your brother? stage.? It is harder and better than the ?I am leaving? Stage of the consumer mentality.? And the ?Transformation Stage? in with a person sticks it out and works it through is certainly ?the road less traveled? in relationships in America today.? It is also the road less traveled in church attendance today.

?Fourth, for those relationships where people have stuck together and processed the hurts then begins the ?Synergy Stage? or what Pastor Meeks calls the ?Incarnation Stage.?? This is the stage in which our relationship has great synergy and joy and mutually positive impact.? This is the stage of a relationship in which we look the most like Jesus?God incarnated in the flesh.? This is the stage in which we love deeply and are loved deeply?despite being known well.? We become interdependent upon each other either as two individuals or as an entire church Body.? In this stage we look the most like the Trinity in our relationship health and commitment.

?If you have decided to leave your carwash I am not much concerned.? But if you have decided to leave your spouse or your church or a friendship?I am very concerned.? I am wondering if you understand the stages of committed, compassionate relationships.? I am wondering if you understand the reality that God did not leave you despite knowing you perfectly and despite finding that you are not the person you project yourself to be.

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